Serbia has a number of new loans in the plan that it intends to take from China, among which the largest one is by far the one for the construction of the Belgrade Metro.
The first two lines of the future subway should cost 4.4 billion euros and be completed by 2028 and 2030, respectively.
As Minister Mali said, France will provide 454 million euros in first-line loans for part of the work performed by its companies, while the rest will be provided by Chinese banks.
This means several billion euros of Chinese loans in the next seven years, probably more than three billion, and for this year alone, the budget foresees the possibility of borrowing from foreign banks of one billion euros for the Belgrade Metro.
If that happens and that money is taken from the Export Import Bank of China as usual, this will raise the value of signed loans with China to some 5.3 billion euros already this year.
The Belgrade metro will be built by the French companies Ežis and Alstom and the Chinese Power China.
The Republic’s budget for this year foresees the possibility of further borrowing from the Chinese for two more large projects: the construction of the Belgrade bypass in the section from Bubanj potok to Pancevo, the so-called Sector C, in the amount of as much as 680 million euros, which includes the bridge over the Danube, and the bypass around Novi Sad, also with the Danube bridge, in the amount of 149 million euros.
With the loan for the metro, this would raise the total amount of loans that Serbia took from China to six billion euros by the end of this year. When you add to that the rest of the money that will be needed for the construction of the Belgrade metro, it is easy to arrive at the figure of eight billion euros signed loans with China.
Currently, the total foreign debt of Serbia is slightly above 24 billion euros.
“Not only are almost all loans given with a fixed interest rate, but it is also very low, usually only two to three percent, which is currently impossible to obtain on the financial markets. This is an attempt to obtain better refinancing conditions from the EU of Chinese loans, at best, very uncertain,” Demostat assessed.
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